Post navigation

“It is technically and economically feasible to run the US economy entirely on renewable energy, and to do so by 2050. That is the conclusion of a study last year in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, authored by Stanford scholar Mark Z. Jacobson and nine colleagues.

Jacobson is well-known for his ambitious and controversial work on renewable energy. In 2011 he published, with Mark A. Delucchi, a two-part paper (one, two) on “providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power.” In 2013 he published a feasibility study on moving New York state entirely to renewables, and in 2014 he created a road map for California to do the same.”

“Speaking on March 26 in the city of Putrajaya, which lies on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, 87-year-old Sumiteru Taniguchi spoke about his experience in Nagasaki as a hibakusha — atomic bomb survivor — to a group of about 300 people, including high school students, who had assembled for a symposium.

A non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the area of peace education in Malaysia had organized the symposium, to which Taniguchi had been invited by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

The Malay Peninsula is the area where the former Imperial Japanese Army launched a surprise land attack on Dec. 8, 1941 — thereby commencing its Southern Operations.”

“My colleagues and I at the World Business Academy have followed climate activism for many years and its on-going campaign to restrain the coal and oil industries. Research, congressional testimony, and activism by numerous climatologists to address climate change has brought this very real global threat into the public consciousness and set the stage to develop a strategy for preserving human civilization as we know it. A December 2013 study, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature,” has further articulated a higher, more urgent imperative for immediate climate remediation.”

“Chernobyl is a word we would all like to erase from our memory. But more than seven million of our fellow human beings do not have the luxury of forgetting. They are still suffering, every day, as a result of what happened…The exact number of victims can never be known.” – former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

“Cameco Corp. plans to close its Rabbit Lake uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan, resulting in the loss of about 500 jobs.

“The uranium market has been low for five years now — over five years,” Tim Gitzel, the Saskatoon-based mining company’s president and CEO, told reporters at an evening news conference in Saskatoon.

“The price of uranium five years ago was about $72 (U.S.) a pound. This afternoon it was $26 (U.S.)”

The uranium market has been depressed since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster resulted in the shutdown of more than 50 Japanese reactors. Gitzel said global oversupply led Cameco to conclude that it can meet its production commitments with its “tier one” assets, meaning the McArthur River and Cigar Lake mines.

“There still seems to be a large inventory of uranium around (and) available, keeping the price down. Until that clears, we’re going to have to just buckle down here, and that’s what we’re doing today.””

This is why northern communities need to look beyond the resource industries and develop a locally sustainable economy more in line with the Dene and Cree values. Being tied to a boom and bust resource-based economy is of no use to us and only leaves us with contamination and no-go zones.

“Around 8,000 km and 25 years separate the catastrophic Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters. There are clear differences between the Ukraine and Japan-based catastrophes, but what are some of the more subtle distinctions? And how were they similar?

Both power stations opened in the 1970s; Fukushima in 1971 and Chernobyl six years later. The Japanese plant was, then, operating for 40 years before the disaster and the Ukrainian just nine. At the time of each disaster, six reactors were running at Fukushima and four at Chernobyl.

Different causes?
At a first glance, the incidents appear to have different causes. The Chernobyl reactor explosion on April 26, 1986, was the result of an experiment carried out by plant personnel. The Fukushima meltdown, meanwhile, was triggered by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011.

However, construction mistakes and negligence have since been cited as being behind both catastrophes.”

“A leak in a massive nuclear waste storage tank at the Hanford Site has expanded significantly, KING 5 learned this weekend.

After leak detector alarms sounded early Sunday morning, crews at Hanford lowered a camera into the two-foot-wide space between the tank’s inner and outer walls. They discovered 8.4 inches of radioactive and chemically toxic waste has seeped into the annulus.

The U.S. Department of Energy released a statement Monday calling the leak an “anticipated” outcome of an ongoing effort to empty the tank in question. The Washington state Department of Ecology said, “There is no indication of waste leaking into the environment or risk to the public at this time.””